


Never Been a Good Man

by Desdemona



Category: The Avengers (2012)
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-06-27
Updated: 2012-06-27
Packaged: 2017-11-08 17:32:09
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 992
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/445711
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Desdemona/pseuds/Desdemona
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>He doesn’t talk about the fact that he’s never warm anymore, that his hands and fingers feel numb and frosted even on the hottest of days.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Never Been a Good Man

**Author's Note:**

> I literally just posted this on Tumblr so here, have it. I'm too wrecked from thinking this deeply to edit so sorry about that if you run into anything.

Clint lives his life by a handful of codes that he’s bent and twisted over time because life requires a guy to do that now and again. But there’s one iron clad rule that has taken over since Natasha knocked his senses back in line and pushed Loki out: your nightmares are your own.

So when he wakes up at night, shaking and gripping his pillow to his mouth to bury the screams, no one knows. He doesn’t talk about the caverns of ice and shadow that haunt his mind, of the red-skinned monster that seems to wait for his nightly return with a reptilian smile, all etched into the very bones of his skull. He doesn’t talk about the fact that he’s never warm anymore, that his hands and fingers feel numb and frosted even on the hottest of days.

He doesn’t talk about sparring every night, beating his opponents (and therefore himself) down until he shouldn’t be able to move, to think, to dream and yet when he collapses into his bunk, the nightmares start up again.

He doesn’t talk about how every morning in his bathroom, he stands in front of the mirror with the lights off and his eyes closed, the guttural fear that his eyes will be ice cold blue again prying at his core, slicing at his soul until it hangs inside of him in ribbons of blood.

Every time he opens them to find his own eyes staring at him, shadowed and empty, but his all the same, is a miracle.

No, he keeps to his rule, no matter how closely Natasha studies him. Or how Stark nudges at him, poking him like a science project failed. Rogers doesn’t know how to approach him at all because out of them, Clint is the closest to him and yet farthest. The frontline was as far away from a sniper’s nest as one could get and still be in the same war zone. And what did you say to someone when all you had in common was death?

Banner is probably the only one who would absolutely understand what it’s like to live with something that isn’t you. Except Banner’s monster is somewhat part of him, affected by him and his moods in a way that Clint’s monster isn’t.

Clint knows, out of everything else, what’s in his head has nothing to do with him. A token, if anything, left over from Loki’s rule that he can’t shake. Out of  _all_  of them, though, he can’t avoid Coulson. He could simply not visit the man’s grave. Could remove it from his routine and replace it with yet more drills to try and outrun his demons.

But he won’t. 

He visits Coulson’s grave every Sunday. Sometimes, Natasha comes because she’s still trying to figure out what’s wrong. She fixed him so he figures she wants to know why he’s malfunctioning again. Which is a little bitter-sounding in his head and shouldn’t be because this how Natasha shows she cares.

But he’s relieved when she doesn’t. And that shouldn’t be either but he’s learned to live with that too. He visits Coulson because there’s no need to hide anything from a tombstone and a bouquet of fresh flowers that has Rogers’ stamped all over them.

Coulson is the only one he breaks his rule for and even then, it doesn’t feel like he’s really doing anything wrong. Maybe because Coulson was the real hero. Because the truth is that Clint isn’t. Never was. He’s a guy with a bow and a quiver full of arrows. And after Loki, Clint isn’t even sure if he’s that guy anymore.

He’s this… _thing_  now, with no past and no future, and a present that he doesn’t understand anymore. With a monster slithering through the icy dark corners in his head.

If this keeps up, he has the feeling he’ll cease to exist. If you didn’t know what you were, if you had no way to define yourself, how did you know you were real? If you were ever real?

It’s more than Clint’s shattered mind can take. So he comes to see Coulson and tells him, confesses like a sinner with no hope left. Sometimes, he leaves feeling worse than before and on those nights, he beats himself to near death, ignores the stares and the comments, stopping only when Fury pinpoints him with a silent stare.

And other times, he walks away, envious that Coulson got out while the getting was good. 

He’s learned to live with that too.

And then, on rare days, he feels like a little kid talking to his mentor. Coulson was only a little older but he’d been put together in a way that Clint could never claim to be. From his neat suits to his buffed shoes, Coulson had reflected the ideal agent. The fact that he’d known his way around weapons had just made him fucking amazing.

Clint had, in a little cubbyhole in his chest, hero-worshipped him a little. And maybe resented. Because Coulson had managed to transcend basic humanity, even before death. And now after, he was something akin to the damn American Bald Eagle. A symbol of everything that was good, pure, and righteous.

And on those rare days, he thinks that Coulson would tell him he’s still got a responsibility, whether he wants it or not. Because Coulson had believed in heroes. See: the Captain America collector cards. But more importantly, Coulson had believed in them.

So on those days, Clint walks away slowly, his forever cold hands buried in his pockets, with his red-skinned demon walking through his head at the same pace, and thinks that he’ll survive another day. He’ll survive this waking nightmare until he can find a way to save himself.

Coulson had died saving all their miserable asses. The least Clint could do was try to live long enough to do right by the guy.


End file.
